Chapter 4
FOUR
SUGAR
The night was dragging by, and I still had several hours left of my shift. Some nights at Liquid Anarchy were nonstop and some were boring as fuck, but most were somewhere in the middle.
Since we only had a few customers and no one had come in for a while, I left my spot by the door and moved to sit behind the bar with Bush and Bean.
“Are you gonna close early if it clears out?” I asked Bush. He’d been the manager of Liquid Anarchy since Whisker became president.
“I was thinking about kicking these fuckers out and closing early. It looked like shit when I was outside earlier.”
A kona low was headed our way, which is why the bar and most of the hotel were empty. Most of the guests at Charli’s Place had heeded our warnings and gone home early. There were only one or two stragglers.
“Fuck,” I groaned when my phone rang.
“Someone’s walking around outside the rooms,” Hamster said as soon as I answered. “It’s not one of the guests.”
“On my way.” I got to my feet and clapped Bush on the shoulder as I passed. “I’ll be right back.”
He chuckled. “Another one?”
“The fifth one,” I deadpanned. Hamster called as soon as he saw something unexpected on the cameras. “It’s probably another lost escort.” We didn’t have issues with people coming onto our property uninvited because nobody fucked with the Kings.
Admittedly, I was in no hurry as I walked across the street to Charli’s Place. I’d yet to get a call from Hamster that amounted to anything. He was lucky I even picked up.
When I saw a person dressed in all black standing outside room four, I was completely caught off guard. I planned to watch them before I made a move, but that went out the window the second they reached for the doorknob with tools in their hand.
Rushing forward, I grabbed the person from behind and growled, “Make one sound and I’ll snap your fucking neck.”
White-hot pain sliced through my thigh, and I instinctively released my hold on them to reach for my leg. “Fuck!”
It was a rookie mistake—one of many I made that night. As I fell to the ground, the person took off running.
“Sugar!” Bean called as he hurried to my side.
“Find them!” I roared. “Fucking find them! God damn it!”
“You don’t give me orders,” Bean said as he kneeled next to me. “The others are looking for him. Let me see the damage.”
I reluctantly lifted my hands, only to immediately put them back when copious amounts of blood spilled from my leg.
“Calling Slit,” Bean grumbled and reached for his phone.
Fucking motherfucking bullshit!
“Need you at Charli’s. Sugar got stabbed in the thigh,” Bean said into his phone. “Yeah, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Do about what?”
Tucking his phone into his pocket, Bean reached for his belt buckle. “Getting you into a room. Here,” he said as he held out his belt. “Put this around your leg above the wound and tighten it.”
He knew good and damn well I knew how to use a belt for a tourniquet, but I kept my mouth shut and cinched the belt as tight as I could. My leg hurt like a motherfucker, and I wanted it to stop as soon as possible.
“Do you think you can walk?”
“Yeah, but not far,” I admitted. “Room two’s open.”
Bean nodded and draped my arm over his shoulder as he helped me hobble to the vacant room.
Once inside, I braced myself against the wall in an attempt to stop the dizziness.
“Toss a blanket on the floor,” I rasped, surprised at how weak I sounded.
“If I bleed all over that mattress, it’ll cost Charli thousands to replace it. ”
“Get him in the bed,” Whisker ordered as he walked into the room.
“I got it, Prez,” I said.
“For fuck’s sake,” Bean said exasperatedly while sliding his arm around my waist. “Take the help, boy.”
I was too tired to argue. Even though my leg was throbbing, I wanted to cover up with one of Charli’s blankets and go to sleep for the foreseeable future. “Fine,” I huffed. “You gonna tuck me in, too?”
“What was that?” Bean asked, but he sounded weird.
“Asked if you were gonna tuck me in, Dad,” I repeated. The words took more effort than they should have, as if my mouth was moving in slow motion.
“You hear this shit?” Bean asked, helping me onto the bed.
“Hear what?” I wondered.
“Slit!” Whisker yelled over his shoulder.
“Right here, Prez.”
“His speech is slurred,” Whisker said.
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” Slit explained. He appeared at my side with his bag of medical shit and spoke loudly. “I’m gonna knock you out while I work on your leg. Might have to bring in help.”
“Do it,” Whisker and Bean said simultaneously.
I wanted to be pissed about them answering over me, but Slit hit me with the good shit, and I was out.
When I woke, I wasn’t surprised to see Bean sitting in the recliner in the corner, but I was surprised to still be in room two. It took me a minute to fully wake up, then I picked up the nearby remote and launched it at Bean.
“You little shit,” he chuckled and got to his feet. “You must be feeling better.”
“My leg hurts like a motherfucker,” I griped.
“Yeah, it’s going to for a while.”
“How long?”
Bean shrugged. “Probably six weeks.”
“Fuck that shit,” I grumbled. “Who was it?”
Bean shook his head. “Don’t know.”
“You’re telling me some motherfucker stabbed me and got away?” I asked incredulously.
“Yeah. Prez is fucking irate,” Bean said. “He’s got nothing and no one’s talking. You got anything?”
“Fuck,” I groaned. I didn’t want to say it, even though I knew they had seen it on the camera footage. “Dude was small.”
Bean laughed. “Oh, this gets better and better. Sure it wasn’t a girl?”
“Fuck off, man.” I pushed myself up in the bed and grunted as pain erupted in my leg. “How bad is it?”
“Not too bad, but it’s deep. Slit said you’ll have to stay completely off it for a few days, maybe a week.”
Fuck. How was I supposed to track down the dumbass who stabbed me and make him regret his decision while sitting around for a week? “Yeah,” I said dismissively. “We’ll see how it goes.”
“You’ll do what he says or risk losing your patch.”
“The fuck you talking about?”
Bean nodded toward my leg. “If you fuck up that leg and can’t ride, you’ll lose your patch.”
“I won’t fuck it up,” I huffed, leaving out “even if I have to sit the fuck down for seven days.”
Bean’s phone dinged. “Charli wants to know if you want something to eat?”
“Whiskey and Lortab.”
Ten minutes later, Charli walked in carrying a tray with a plate of eggs, rice, SPAM, a glass of whiskey, and two pills. “If you show your ass, you won’t get any more.”
“Understood,” I said and popped the two pills in my mouth before I emptied the glass of whiskey.
“Fucking hell.” Charli shook her head as she took the empty glass. “You’re not getting any more right now.”
“What am I supposed to drink?” I teased.
Whisker appeared carrying a large carafe of coffee.
“Thanks, Son.” Whisker smiled. He’d always shown love and respect for his mother, but he went out of his way to keep anything from upsetting her while Cooter was in prison.
Before he stepped down as president, Cooter ordered Whisker and the entire club to protect her, but it wasn’t necessary.
Charli was more than Cooter’s wife and Whisker’s mom; she was family to all the Kings.
“The fuck you let happen last night?” Biscuit asked.
“The fuck you asking for?” I countered. “You know what happened.”
“Just wanted to hear you say you got stuck by someone half your size.”
“Say it? Let’s watch it,” Whisker suggested.
“Fuck,” I groaned and rubbed my forehead. “I was there. I don’t need to see it.”
“You need to watch it at least once,” Biscuit said pointedly. “See if you notice anything we didn’t.”
“Fine,” I relented. I didn’t want to watch my arrogant ass make a stupid mistake, but he was right. “Play it.”
“I’ll see myself out,” Charli said. I don’t know how she was in the early days of the club, but she always disappeared as soon as club business came up.
Whisker snorted. “You don’t have to leave, Mom. You’ve already seen the video, and it happened on your property.”
Charli rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t matter where it happened. He was stabbed on Kings’ land. It’s club business.”
“It is,” Whisker acknowledged. “And I said you can stay.”
“That president voice doesn’t work on me,” she said with a pointed look. “You go ahead. I have some work to do.”
When Biscuit got up and followed her out, I glanced between Bean and Whisker.
Bean had been Charli’s unofficial security detail since he stepped down as enforcer, which was at the same time Cooter and Pocket resigned before they were sentenced.
No one talked about it, but I thought the old timers knew something that the rest of us weren’t completely privy too.
“Bean had a family emergency, so Biscuit’s filling in for him,” Whisker said, answering my unasked question.
I nodded in acknowledgment. “Got it. Biscuit is her Bean, and Bean is my Bean.”
“Watch it, boy,” Bean warned.
Whisker picked up the remote and turned on the television. “Both of you shut the fuck up and pay attention.”
With that, he pressed play, and I watched myself get stabbed—over and over as the footage played on a loop. “You can pause it. Once was enough.”
“Did you see something?” Whisker asked eagerly.
“No. Like I said last night, there wasn’t much to see.” But I did see something—I saw myself casually checking out a report from security instead of acting like the motherfucking enforcer for the club.
“Did he say anything?” Whisker asked.
I shook my head. I’d already answered that question, but I did again. “No. Not a word.”
Whisker paced the length of the room. “Okay, we know a male dressed in all black stabbed my enforcer on my mom’s property.”
I nodded in agreement.
His pacing abruptly halted and his gaze locked onto mine. “You got anything to tell us?” His voice held a hint of accusation.
My hackles instantly rose. “What the fuck, Prez?”
“He’s questioning your dick, not your loyalty,” Bean clarified.
“Wouldn’t be the first time a pissed off husband got brave,” Whisker added.
I shrugged. “I don’t ask many questions after I get a yes.”
Whisker tilted his head back and inhaled deeply. “Well, that narrows it down to every male on the island between five-four and five-six.”
“They weren’t targeting me,” I said. “They were trying to get into room four.”
“Why do you think that?”
My forehead wrinkled in confusion. “Because they had a lock picking set.”
“Why room four?”
“Because we only had two rooms occupied and room four is on the ground level.”
“Or is that what they wanted you to think?” Whisker countered. “How many times has Hamster called in something that turned out to be nothing? Maybe it was something—or someone—and they were watching how we handle things.”
I looked at Bean to make sure he was hearing what I was.
Whisker had been different since he became president.
He ran a tighter ship, and he was watchful, cautious, analytical in ways he hadn’t been.
I assumed it was part of being the president, but for the first time, I wondered if his personality changes had more to do with his dad going to prison.